It's fine, you know, whatever. It's a slim, action game Final Fantasy XIV quest line that's slightly cheaper than a month's sub costs. Chase some jagoffs around, do a dungeon with exactly three (3) bosses and some trash mobs in between. Whether that sounds compelling is entirely up to you. But man, a little bit of distance makes this gameplay so much less compelling. Too much of this game relies on liberal usage of a generous dodge and managing a handful of cooldowns, done in the exact same way for every enemy. By the end of my main playthrough, I'd chosen a set of abilities that I thought were fun. (Basically revolving around using Lightning Rod and Zantetsuken to make the most out of a stagger.) There was really no point in me trying to iterate on that for a 2-3 hour DLC, and I just kinda did the same thing over and over. Coming to this after recently playing through Kingdom Hearts II, where you have to constantly change your strategies even for some basic encounters, really puts this into focus.
The biggest buzzkill was the first time I staggered the DLC's main boss. I had a Zantetsuken locked and loaded, a Lightning Rod there to cause extra hits and damage, and a Diamond Dust ready to juice up the damage multiplier. (It can go higher in the DLC than in the main game!) I pulled those off, then used Gungnir to prep a second Zantetsuken. But as I watched the animation play out, I realized that I wasn't actually doing any more damage. I'd forgotten! There's hard locks on how much damage you can do, because the fight has to transition to the next phase, make sure you see all the dramatic set pieces.
They are cool set pieces, no doubt. The fluidity and spectacle of some of that boss's animations did leave me awestruck in a couple of cases. But the animators' hard work gets highlighted over the work that I'm trying to put into to enjoy this thing; that all the effort I'd put into doing extra damage meant absolutely nothing. I had to play by the game's timeline, and I just don't know why I'd even bother trying to have fun with the game's mechanics at that point.
There is a lot to like about the main game, but this DLC mostly dragged into focus the things I don't like about it all that much. It's just an extra dungeon with a not-particularly-good story and a boss that cost a lot of money, but doesn't feel very different from any other boss in the game. It feels slightly like an obligation, just something they did because that's what you do with AAA games these days. Presumably the second DLC—which I will play, because I'm an idiot—will be a bit bigger, a bit tastier, will at least have a few new abilities to play with. This just kinda felt like a waste of everyone's time.
Also—small spoiler here—can I just say that rearranging the Omega theme from FFXIV is kinda tacky? They've used it enough times in its original game alone, don't really need to use it here, too. Not even a particularly good arrangement. Bleh.
The biggest buzzkill was the first time I staggered the DLC's main boss. I had a Zantetsuken locked and loaded, a Lightning Rod there to cause extra hits and damage, and a Diamond Dust ready to juice up the damage multiplier. (It can go higher in the DLC than in the main game!) I pulled those off, then used Gungnir to prep a second Zantetsuken. But as I watched the animation play out, I realized that I wasn't actually doing any more damage. I'd forgotten! There's hard locks on how much damage you can do, because the fight has to transition to the next phase, make sure you see all the dramatic set pieces.
They are cool set pieces, no doubt. The fluidity and spectacle of some of that boss's animations did leave me awestruck in a couple of cases. But the animators' hard work gets highlighted over the work that I'm trying to put into to enjoy this thing; that all the effort I'd put into doing extra damage meant absolutely nothing. I had to play by the game's timeline, and I just don't know why I'd even bother trying to have fun with the game's mechanics at that point.
There is a lot to like about the main game, but this DLC mostly dragged into focus the things I don't like about it all that much. It's just an extra dungeon with a not-particularly-good story and a boss that cost a lot of money, but doesn't feel very different from any other boss in the game. It feels slightly like an obligation, just something they did because that's what you do with AAA games these days. Presumably the second DLC—which I will play, because I'm an idiot—will be a bit bigger, a bit tastier, will at least have a few new abilities to play with. This just kinda felt like a waste of everyone's time.
Also—small spoiler here—can I just say that rearranging the Omega theme from FFXIV is kinda tacky? They've used it enough times in its original game alone, don't really need to use it here, too. Not even a particularly good arrangement. Bleh.